alanschu

If you're at a post-secondary institution, you should have reprieve for this type of inappropriate action. I'd almost write the paper explicitly to challenge her. Honestly, if she doesn't she's a discredit to the University. And when you go to her to discuss the poor mark, say to her "I plan on combating racism by not standing by and accepting your discriminatory marking because I disagree with how you see the world." Which, given your previous examples of what happened in the class, is probably quite valid. It'd be a lot of work, but I honestly think that your professor is performing a disservice to her students, in addition to blemishing the school's reputation. What's the professor's name? I'm curious about her publishing history.

Most of my experience with Baldur's Gate 2 had the AI scripts disabled because I found it woefully ineffective and wasteful Having said that, I still support the decision to not have the AI use abilities that you have not instructed them to use. Concerns over the number of tactic slots, as well as the number of tactic slots are certainly valid, but I like that the AI doesn't go around using inappropriate spells in situations that I have not specified they should use. Watching him cast Force Field on the crappy Genlock instead of the Mage would be frustrating to me. Or inappropriate use of an AOE spell that would result in me nuking my own party, or using a healing spell when I don't think it is necessary.

I'm referring to the fact that you consider it profiteering to charge money for stuff that "should have been in the main game." Arguments that could (and have) been made for Tales of the Sword Coast. Given that all of the content was designed to exist explicitly before the end of the main game, in addition to some extra features, as well as raising the level cap, there's ample evidence to suggest that the bulk of its content (if not all of it) was designed and created in conjunction with the main game. Especially considering how soon it came out after the release of the original Baldur's Gate, and the fact that the game shipped with an extra space for an expansion CD.

I think Morrigan's is technically Australian

I don't recall Baldur's Gate 2 NPCs being particularly good at managing themselves in the game. It's been a long time since I last played it, but I remember it being a game that required significantly more micromanagement than Dragon Age.

I'm at 42 hours (Main character + 4 additional origin stories) with 36% game completion and 82% of the world explored. I'm almost finished my first run. I'd expect that I'm not more than 1 or 2 areas away from the final boss. I am currently Currently level 18 I believe. Hoping to get Wynne to 19 before the end so I can give her Cone of Cold. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that those stats are based on your achievements earned. I believe you get an achievement (maybe just a hidden one.... I can't remember) for every area you reach the first time, and the 36% game completion is definitely based on achievements. It's a bit misleading, but I'm pretty sure the only way to get every achievement is to actually 100% experience all of the content in the game, sooo it technically is accurate along that metric

This has probably been answered much earlier in the thread, but is the l00t random? Some of the loot is random, but a lot of it is not. I don't think the socketable items are random.

I actually found the crafting to be a bit too simple. But I always did laugh when in the middle of a hard fight, I could instantly craft me up some health potions

Although this is similar to a lot of games. Save the taunt for when people go running past and use it then, and I'd recommend setting up the NPC tactics to attack the tank's target so that a tank with Threaten on can keep the attention more easily. Opening up with big AOE's will make things challenging for your spell casters.

Yes. its silly I have to buy tactical slots to tell my party to use their own abilities. What am I supposed to do burn all my skill point into that and not beable to make healing pots or pick locks? Skills points are few and far between not like you get one every level. If the default AI would just make them use their natural abilities on their own I wouldn't have a issue. Bioware seems to just give us dumb party AI but unlike other CRPG games labled it as a 'feature' of being 'tactical' and the sheep bought it. Sad really. Where as another CRPG the community would be howling bloody murder. I suppose all CRPGs just need to do that now. Give just mininum party AI, toss in a pause button and call it a 'tactical RPG'. Spending little time on party AI solved. I agree that it's poor design to have to dump points into combat tactics for extra tactics slots, but at the same time, it also makes sense why things NOT on the tactics slots don't get cast. It'd be counter productive for the game player to intentionally leave off spells that they don't want to be wasted, only for the AI to decide to use them when the player would like to restrict it. Picking locks is a talent, not a skill, so that shouldn't cause a problem. However, since you really don't need to invest much into tactic slots for your main character (I never did), you can save that area. Skill points are rarer, but there's plenty of them for you to invest all points into combat tactics and still have them move into different aspects. Especially since the advantage of mages having combat training is significantly diminished. If you're having issues with the combat being difficult, and find that it's in large part because you don't want to bother with micromanaging your characters, I'd suggest "burning" the points into combat tactics, since it seems as though that would make for a more enjoyable experience for yourself. You'll still have points to invest into the crafting components as well.

Are you referring to the end of the game? No, the last hour of my current playing session. Canceled hold position from my party, they started running past the three enemies I was leading to them to attack someone they didn't even see, archer Leliana was hellbent on using Distraction even though I told her to attack, or she and Wynne just stop attacking when I don't control them actively. The enemies running past the meat shields even though they block the way didn't make me happier either.At least the dog's useful. Could you PM me your tactics (or post them here ) for your party members?

Needs new video card

Oh, and if you can't find material specific to supporting your position, then you have some decisions to make. The first (and infinitely most important, and it has virtually nothing to do with your academic success) is to wonder why you feel the way that you do. Commonsense and logic are often wrong, and I think it's important to critically look at why you believe the way that you do. The other decision is to address why you can't find any data. You could conclude that the research is still insufficient. You could conclude that the research has inherent biases and so forth. In the end, you'll realize that you have, in fact, created a lot of valid reasons for why you believe that it is. Because ultimately, if you can't give solid reasons for why you are (or are not) actively combating racism, then why are you staying with your current course of action on the issue? Even if your reasoning is "I have better stuff I have to do," you can still use that as a segue into reasons why you feel it is ineffective, a waste of time, etc.

If you're professor isn't a complete douche, you should have no problems stating why you are (or are not) actively combating racism. The important thing is to support your opinion, preferably with actual studies and data to support your opinion. Especially if it has been discussed in class. I took a sociology course on globalization, and the professor was openly left-wing (she stated her bias the first day of class), as was probably 95% of the class. On both the midterm and the final I wrote essays that explained why I feel the globalization crisis is overstated, supported by my interpretations of what I got from classroom discussion as well as the class readings. I got 98% on the midterm and 95% on the final, even though my papers would have been in direct contradiction to the beliefs of the teacher, and the general tone of the readings and classroom discussion.

Well, you mention that it seems like your rogue is better than your warriors. It might make the game more difficult, but I didn't state that the hotfix made the game easier. It wasn't perfectly clear, but I was referring to it making rogues better than warriors.

I think you're overstating the "considerable." You get one tree, four talents. Picking them means not picking other talents as well. Once upon a time I became a big believer that people should spend some time working in retail, as well as in a restaurant, to gain better appreciation for the people that work those jobs. Unfortunately the education requirements will be too strict, but I think it might not be bad for game players to actually spend some time working in software development to gain an appreciation for the process. Based a lot on what I have seen people say and write over the years, particularly the ease with which people think programming is, as well as design decisions within the development cycle (and I'm not even just talking games here), it might be some interesting perspective on the issue. I'm almost convinced that posting the full schedules of the staff, the full changelog of every update, checkin, and checkout from the repository, coupled with a divine omnipotent being corroborating all of it, and people still would maintain their preconceptions for how decisions are made, and how easy it would be for people to implement so many of their changes/suggestions/what have you. I mean, Lucian himself comments that he doesn't like profiteering, specifically referring to things that should have been in the game since it was made at the same time...yet he has a Baldur's Gate modding webpage in his signature.

I wonder if the hotfix completely flipped it.

I'm curious. Was part of the problem because you didn't want to "burn" skill points into Combat Tactics?

On a personal level I found DA to be slightly easier than Baldur's Gate 2, and a fair bit easier than Baldur's Gate (because it's very cruel to start the game off...low level D&D). Perhaps the perspective and whatnot made it a bit easier in those games for you?

for you it might be effective marketing, for me it is dealbreaking issue... there is reason why i never watch TV stations, which do have commercials in middle of movies... they do break the immersion for me as much as stuff for real money NPCs in computer games... But yes it is effective marketing in a way... it effectively saved me 60 EUR I straight up contend that if this is the reason is why you saved 60 Euros, you had other reasons for not wanting the game. A character in party camp and another guy on the side of the road and the 2 minutes of conversation, based on hearsay commentary from other people about how "immersion breaking it is," stopping you outright from buying a 60 hour long game you'd otherwise have enjoyed?

Of course it doesn't, since there's no guarantee that you even have an IMP. JA2 has various tiers of progress specified, which relate to how capable the enemies are, what equipment the enemy will use, and weapons you can buy at the various stores. The game's progress is based on income, sector control, and kills.

From the Social Website's FAQ: You cannot update your email address on this site - you would need to go to profile.ea.com to manage the email address associated with your EA account. Note that this would change it for all EA games and sites!

Did you read Georg's response? He mentioned that it was in camp to start, but at the last minute they realized that given that camp changes a lot, inventory in the chest wasn't being properly stored. It sounded like a last minute cut because of this issue. Unfortunately, it's not trivial to change things at the end (especially if they need to be changed) and rather than ship something they feel could be buggy and cause serious issues, they felt the best decision at that time was removing it. As for "knowing it was going to be a problem," on a personal level I didn't file it as a bug for two reasons. It was late in development when I started, and figured it was as design. During my playthrough when I ran into inventory issues, I realized that the game wasn't just going to let me be a packrat. So I decided to trim my inventory of a lot of duplicate armor and weapons (which was taking up a lot of inventory slots), and realized that I have no plans to do much crafting with all those salves and whatnot (the crafting system just does not interest me), and I realized that a lot of the stuff (like "Personal Documents") was just merchant filler. When I was full on inventory, that was the first stuff to get deleted if I actually needed to pick up something I deemed valuable enough. I didn't feel as though the system was broken. As for the evidence to the contrary, it's circumstantial. I've seen a lot of the fun pseudo-code "solutions" that a lot of people post in response to "easy fixes" and so forth. People have put the pieces together the way they want to.

COuldn't you have just bumped it back to normal afterward?

To be clear, the game does NOT blindside you or do any "sneaky" actions to get you to buy something without realizing you're buying it. When you click on the Premium Content conversation option, you are notified that in order to play the premium content, you will need to purchase it. It then asks if you want to proceed. If you say no, then you continue on as if you had not picked the Premium Content conversation option. It most definitely IS clearly marked as premium content before you buy it. I disagree that it's trickery. You hear the story, and if you don't own the DLC, the option to accept the quest comes with "(Premium Content)" in front of it. When you select it, it asks if you want to purchase the premium content. As for your final statement, there's probably an idea that some people may not know that premium content has become available. I suspect that's why they've experimented with in game premium content hooks. This is always an issue with any DLC. Sometimes some people are just going to be SOL. I had slow internet for a long time which prevented me from playing games that I wanted to play like Diablo II or trying out MMOs. I think ti's safe to say that people that are not willing to spend the time downloading it, or have bandwidth restrictions on their internet, are not the target market for DLC. This is certainly a concern. It is possible (I hear) to permanently back up your DLC. Also, how significant is the consumer base that replays old games 5-10 years down the line? I'll wholeheartedly agree that there are technical issues with the DLC right now. Which is unfortunate. Hopefully easy fixes/remedies can be found. As an example, I found some typo errors in conversations, as well as some fact errors in the Codex depending on how you play through the game. I submitted them as bugs, and they were acknowledged but unfortunately listed as will not fix because of timeline issues, as well as localization issues.